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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delicious when fried, September 22, 2006
This review is from: Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? (Hardcover)
There are some jokes out there that are so classic they've passed the point where they're funny anymore. Knock-knock jokes fall into this category. Light bulb jokes too. And then there's the best one of them all. Why-did-the-chicken-cross-the-road jokes. Boy oh boy you just can't make anyone laugh with one of those anymore, can you? Well that's the way my thinking would have gone had I not picked up a bizarre little picture book title by the same name. In this book fourteen different children's illustrators are each granted a two-page spread to offer their answer to this, the oldest of questions. No two answers are exactly alike and no two illustrators have styles even vaguely similar. It makes for a book that kids will adore, grown-ups will pore over, and insipient illustrators will want to keep very close at hand.
So why did the chicken cross the road? The answer may surprise you. Marla Frazee, illustrator of things like "Roller Coaster", and the recent smash hit, "Walk On: A Guide For Babies", shows a determined chicken crossing a road away from a rain-soaked grey-skied chicken coop towards a blue-skied brightly colored fun-factory of a building. Her single thought: "duh". Turn the page and Mo Willems has taken an entirely different tack. In the gloom of a police department some hard-boiled cops are giving a very nervous chicken (note the number of eggs under its chair) the third degree. The chicken itself is insisting that "I just did it to get to the other side! Honest!". To one side a detective is pouring the contents of a significant looking charcoal bag onto a grill. The entire book is like this. David Shannon taps into a vein not dissimilar from his beloved "Duck On a Bike" to show us chicken at the wheel of a fancy red convertible. Flip further through the book and you see pictures by everyone from the great Jerry Pinkney to the far-out Mary Grandpre and the more than slightly twisted machinations of David Catrow. Here you may find more answers than you ever could have thought up yourself.
The great joy of a book like this is that it also serves to introduce people to hitherto unknown illustrators. I remembered most of the people from this book before, but then there were people like Chris Sheban who'd entirely escaped my notice in the past. Mr. Sheban's picture is an evocative piece where one chicken has accidentally hit a baseball over another chicken's head and into a window. The two stand poised in a kind of frozen shock as late afternoon light seeps over the suburban scene. Or there was Judy Schachner who's tiny-brained chick, "wasn't just free range ... she was de-ranged!". I suppose my favorite pictures in here were from people who seemingly were working in unexpected ways. Take Jon Agee as your example. If you've seen his "Terrific" or "The Incredible Painting of Felix Clousseau" then you are aware of his clean lines and sparse palette. Now consider a picture that consists of cars, people, dogs, pigs, motorcyclists, buses, etc. fleeing from three hungry look dinosaurs. And perched on the side of the road, not immediately apparent to the eye, stands a lone chicken. Or consider Harry Bliss. I was used to his New Yorker-like picture books like, "Don't Forget To Come Back" that tend to have an innate sophistication to them. The last thing I would have expected was for him to come up with the answer, "Ask the mutated zombie chickens from Mars!". But you know what? It works.
Children's illustrators banding together to put together a book... it's not a new concept is it? I mean, you can always find books like, "Oz: The Hundredth Anniversary Celebration" or "The Art of Reading: Forty Illustrator's Celebrate RIF's 40th Anniversary". The problem with those titles, though, is that they're really not produced with kids in mind. Far rarer is the picture book filled with different illustrators that kids might recognize and love. I'm not saying it's never happened before. But name me three such books off the top of your head and I'll be mighty impressed, if not utterly blown away. No, sir, this is an original idea and a classy little work. Consider this book to be an essential addition to any picture book collection. Funny and fabulous.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
To Give 14 Illustrators the Opportunity to Share Some Fun!, February 23, 2008
An inspired idea: Get 14 leading kids' book illustratos to write the illustrate their punch line to the old chestnut of a riddle "Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road." It's like a series of knock-knock jokes: Rapid-fire visual and written humor that proceeds in wonderfully silly fashion, even if a few are not quite as clever as the others.
The 14 2-page spreads are like a narrow window into each illustrator's style and sense of humor. While each is unique, there were more similarities than I would have imagined. A common theme was that the chicken crossed to join some wild or unexpected extravaganza unavailable on the current side of the road. This might be am ultra-chic (chick?) new chicken house (Frazee), a Victorian-era picnic lunch (somewhat dull, but a great tapestry-like picture by Jerry Pinkney), a Cubist/Gaugin inspired tropical oasis in the middle of a vegetable patch (Grandpre)), or simply a huge sandwich at "Lou's Diner Across the ROad." (Catrow).
The best of the lot, I think, are those that subvert the traditional elements of the joke. Leave it to Mo Willems to picture a chicken in a police station, nervously insisyinh "I'm telling you guys, I just did it to get to the other side! Honest!" while, in a deft visual pun, another detective pours charcoal on a grill. David Shannon and Lynn Mussinger approach the question somewhat matter-of-factly: Shannon answers, "Because the light was green," with a chicken, pig, and cow joy-riding--to the joy of kids, and the shock and dismay of adults. Mussinger replies "because the light said 'walk,'" and shows an entire street full of chickens and chickens only, including police-chicken, shoppers coming from "Coopingdale's," and a tiny chicken on roller skates--even the crosswalk sign shows a chicken walking. Others illustrators take a reverse approach, and rely on fantastic (as in "fantasy") answers and pictures.
There's a two-page "Scoop from the Coop" spread in the back, in which the illustrators "explain" their answers, but do so jokingly,without giving adults or older kids any insight into their creative juices. Fortunately, there's a partial list of books they've illustrated, so that adults and kids can find more of their work. While a few of the scenes didn't quite work, this is a unique, funny, and very entertaining presentation. It'shigh concept, but in a very easily appreciated format.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly entertaining, March 8, 2007
This review is from: Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? (Hardcover)
I'm not sure if my daughter enjoyed this as much as I did, but this book is hilarious and fun. This collection of illustrations is top-notch, to put it simply. This is a great book for stimulating interactive questions between the reader and the listener, too. This is one that YOU will want to read again and again. Oh yeah, and your child/students probably will, too.
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